Time to declare martial law in … Chicago?

posted at 10:01 am on July 9, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

No one doubts that Chicago has a significant problem with violence. As of Monday, the city logged its 200th homicide this year, a shooting that followed a dozen other shooting murders over the Independence Day holiday weekend, and dozens of more wounded in other incidents in the same time frame. It’s worth noting, though, that this is the latest the city hit its 200th homicide in the last four years, according to Red Eye Chicago, and that the homicide rate is down 4% over last year, which was the lowest year for Chicago homicides in nearly 50 years.

A major American city is quickly being lost to guns, gangs, drugs and hopelessness, and political and business leaders are giving lip service to the problem. Yet while our politicians dither, the city’s Southside and Westside residents are living in perpetual fear, afraid to walk the streets.

It’s time for Mayor Rahn Emanuel to put his ego and political ambitions aside. It’s time for him to ask the state police and the National Guard to come into Chicago and assist the police department in regaining control of the city’s streets.

Except that he’s not really limiting their role to simple law-enforcement assistance:

Some critics have said that putting troops on the ground is the wrong signal to send. I disagree. There is no reason the National Guard can’t drop a dragnet over the hot spots in Chicago. They can erect barricades and check points, inspect cars, confiscate guns, run warrant checks and shut down the cartels in the city.

In effect, Chicago needs a troop surge like what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we wanted to make the lives of residents there safer, why not do the same for Americans?

Perhaps because law enforcement in the US is properly left to civilian authority? And how, precisely, would the National Guard “shut down the cartels in the city”? The implication here is that they would do so through a military occupation that bypassed civil law, even though the National Guard has no idea who these cartels are and no expertise in “shutting them down.” Martin treats the National Guard like a Deus ex machina law-enforcement organization rather than the reserve military and logistical power that it actually is.

The National Guard can get mobilized by governors to address emergency situations, but that’s almost always in the context of providing logistics for relief efforts after natural disasters. In some cases — Hurricane Katrina was one — the National Guard does provide for law enforcement, but that only happens when civilian authority collapses. Civilian authority hasn’t collapsed in Chicago, and as the statistics suggest, it’s far from the worst Chicago has handled without calling for martial law and the suspension of the Fourth Amendment.

Maybe Martin should listen more carefully to “some critics,” who seem to have a better grasp on both the law and reality. And while it’s considered trite to mention this, maybe Chicago should rethink their enthusiasm for gun-control laws that clearly don’t keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, but ensures that most of the potential victims are defenseless. That way, Chicago might not need the National Guard or the Super Friends Justice League to impose martial law, and some criminals might have second thoughts about operating in the Windy City. At the very least, it would be a novel — and constitutional — approach to the chronic problem.

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Since we’ve been under an official State of Emergency… Since 9/14/2001, Obama has the legal authority to impose Martial Law on the entire country with just a stroke of his famous pen. He doesn’t even need to consult with Congress before doing it. G W Bush declared the SOE right after 9/11 which gives the sitting President extraordinary power and allows him to bypass Congress’ normal authority to the point it make Obama the Dictator in Chief.

Congress has the Obligation to review the necessity to continue with the SOE declaration every 6 months from the time it is activated and decide to cancel it or let it remain in place. They, Congress, have left it active for 13 years. That standing is how it is legal for Obama to go around Congress whenever he wants to.

Google State of Emergency to review the extraordinary powers that Obama has been given… It will blow your mind.

One must ask himself if he trusts this President with all of this extraordinary power after considering this statement…

Perhaps it can be summed up succinctly in the words of arch-conservative activist Howard J. Ruff. “Since the enactment of Executive Order 11490, the only thing standing between us and dictatorship is the good character of the President, and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it.”

I don’t trust anyone with that much power and I am really profoundly amazed that Congress would have ever allowed that much power to be given to any one human being.

Remember those Kurt Russell movies Escape from NY? That will be Chicago in 10 years.

HumpBot Salvation on July 9, 2014 at 10:20 AM

I was thinking the same thing.
Maybe that’s the solution – let’s just build a wall around Chitcago – probably cut the crime rate for the rest of the US more than a wall across the Mexican border would.

I wonder how much federal handout money being given to the deadbeats is being saved with these low lifes killing each other? It is such a shame that innocent people are being killed too! This is what happens when our Constitution is ignored!
All citizens have a GOD GIVEN RIGHT that enables them to protect themselves with ” the RIGHT to keep and bear arms” except in shitcargo, DC and other liberal places!
You reap what you sow!

I wonder how much federal handout money being given to the deadbeats is being saved with these low lifes killing each other? It is such a shame that innocent people are being killed too! This is what happens when our Constitution is ignored!
All citizens have a GOD GIVEN RIGHT that enables them to protect themselves with ” the RIGHT to keep and bear arms” except in shitcargo, DC and other liberal places!
You reap what you sew!

Saw where they had a similar situation with the Mafia in Sicily not too long ago. They finally called in the military to do the day-to-day law enforcement, which freed the police to concentrate on the mob. It worked, too.

The Illinois National Guard was mobilized by the governor to perform law enforcement duties and quell violence during the 1968 riots. There is a large contingent of law enforcement personnel in the national guard throughout the state. This would not circumvent posse commitatus in any way. Roll ’em in by the LMTV load and take over the streets of the harshest ghettos. The bangers will identify themselves soon enough by their own actions and the Guard will sort out who’s who…

It would appear by your comment that you have left auto refresh active. Next time should you decide to leave auto refresh active, do one of two things. #1 Press the back button one page on your browser. Your comment should still be there. Or #2 Start typing your comment on another none auto refreshing page i.e. clipboard and then when done paste into HA comment box. Frankly I would turn off the auto refresh feature here at HA via a third party app and continue to type into the HA comment box.

Perhaps it can be summed up succinctly in the words of arch-conservative activist Howard J. Ruff. “Since the enactment of Executive Order 11490, the only thing standing between us and dictatorship is the good character of the President, and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it.”

wartface on July 9, 2014 at 12:31 PM

Does an invasion by hundreds of thousands of disease- and vermin- ridden children qualify as an “emergency”?

It would appear by your comment that you have left auto refresh active. Next time should you decide to leave auto refresh active, do one of two things. #1 Press the back button one page on your browser. Your comment should still be there. Or #2 Start typing your comment on another none auto refreshing page i.e. clipboard and then when done paste into HA comment box. Frankly I would turn off the auto refresh feature here at HA via a third party app and continue to type into the HA comment box.

Bmore on July 9, 2014 at 4:16 PM

Love to. Just how would I accomplish this, given I’m coping with “Chrome”? There is no control (visible) that allows me to disable auto-refresh, or auto-play for video ads (which have clogged even Wi-Fi connections, to the point where a web page can take five minutes or more to load?!?

Martin treats the National Guard like a Deus ex machina law-enforcement organization rather than the reserve military and logistical power that it actually is.

Ironic. The National Guard is the “Deus ex machina” that enforced civil rights laws and eliminated Jim Crow when the civilian police refused to do so back in the 50s and 60s, and nowadays it is civil rights and anti-racism carried to absurd extremes that has made law enforcement by the civilian police virtually impossible, prompting a black journalist to call for the National Guard to take control from the civilian police by exercising martial law and suspending civil rights in the black neighborhoods.

yesiamapirate on July 9, 2014 at 2:19 PM
It would appear by your comment that you have left auto refresh active. Next time should you decide to leave auto refresh active, do one of two things. #1 Press the back button one page on your browser. Your comment should still be there. Or #2 Start typing your comment on another none auto refreshing page i.e. clipboard and then when done paste into HA comment box. Frankly I would turn off the auto refresh feature here at HA via a third party app and continue to type into the HA comment box.
Bmore on July 9, 2014 at 4:16 PM

As I was writing to thank you it happened again Being digitally dyslexic and having fingers not designed for an iPhone keyboard doesn’t help. Thanks to all the commenters who helped. I, too miss Firefox, but it’s a matter of principle.